{"id":16280,"date":"2020-07-02T14:37:34","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T11:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/?p=16280"},"modified":"2020-07-02T14:37:34","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T11:37:34","slug":"putin-strongly-backed-in-controversial-russian-reform-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/weben\/putin-strongly-backed-in-controversial-russian-reform-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin strongly backed in controversial Russian reform vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly 78% of Russian voters backed constitutional reforms that could keep President Vladimir Putin in power until 2036, election officials say. With all the ballots counted, 77.9% voted for the reform package and 21.3% against, the electoral commission said.<\/p>\n

The reforms will reset Mr Putin’s term limits to zero in 2024, allowing him to serve two more six-year terms. Opposition figures denounced the vote, saying he was aiming to be ”president for life”, a claim Mr Putin denies.<\/p>\n

He is already the longest-serving leader in modern Russian history since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.<\/p>\n

There was no independent scrutiny of the seven-day vote, and copies of the new constitution appeared in bookshops during the week.<\/p>\n

By spreading out the vote, because of the coronavirus infection risk, the authorities made any monitoring of it more difficult.<\/p>\n

Golos, an independent Russian election monitoring group, has castigated the vote, alleging there were many violations of democracy.<\/p>\n

Its criticisms include: opponents were barred from campaigning in the media; remote electronic voting was organised on an illegal basis; election monitors were appointed by the Civic Chamber – a government body.<\/p>\n

Golos describes it as ”just a PR exercise from the very start” and says ”there was no legal need for it”. The vote ”will go down in history as an attack on the sovereignty of the people”.<\/p>\n

The reforms include a ban on same-sex marriage – by defining marriage as between a man and a woman – and introducing a reference to Russia’s ancestral ”faith in God”.<\/p>\n

Election officials say turnout was 65%. The highest levels of support – above 90% – were in Crimea, annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, in Chechnya in the North Caucasus, and Tuva, in Siberia.<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly 78% of Russian voters backed constitutional reforms that could keep President Vladimir Putin in power until 2036, election officials say. With all the ballots…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":null,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":null,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40],"tags":[4665,4329,4664,1200],"class_list":["post-16280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weben","tag-constitution","tag-putin","tag-reform","tag-russia","wpcat-40-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/rsz_vaulogo.jpg?fit=100%2C58&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16282,"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16280\/revisions\/16282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}